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  • LinkedIn and Conference Readers

    By Joshua Kim November 15, 2010 8:46 pm EST

    Today was the first time I used LinkedIn to develop a list of potential readers for a conference submission process that I’m working on. What a pleasure!

    Figuring out which networks to tap of tasks such as looking for volunteer readers or evaluators has always been a challenge. We end up going back to the people who have volunteered before, or people we connect with on a regular basis.

    What is great about using LinkedIn to find readers/evaluators is that some unexpected names pop-up. For instance, I was not thinking of tapping my contacts in industry - but in looking at my LinkedIn list I realized that they may make great evaluators for academic conference submissions.

    LinkedIn is one of those few social networks that I am finding to be more useful as my professional demands increase. Facebook has become little more than a distraction (although I liked the movie), it could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn’t miss it much. But LinkedIn is beginning to embody my professional network - a property infinitely more valuable as relationships drive so much of successful practice in the world of educational technology.

    Is your professional network on LinkedIn?

    How do you use LinkedIn to manage your professional networks?

    What features would you like to see on LinkedIn to improve usability, functionality, etc?

    What other platforms would you like to see LinkedIn integrated with?

    What do you see as the limitations of LinkedIn?

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Comments on LinkedIn and Conference Readers

  • Sounds a bit like stealth marketing, but you have a point...
  • Posted by teekay on November 16, 2010 at 8:00am EST
  • It almost sounds like you are getting paid by LinkedIn for this post, but I actually like to use it, too, and I find it the most useful network to bridge professional and academic networking. I work/research/teach in an 'applied' subject and LinkedIn is useful to keep in touch with many of my freelance colleagues who travel and change positions a lot. It is more useful for my discipline than Xing or academia.edu, but I'm also based in North America at the moment and location makes a difference in the virtual world ;). It's a comprehensive address book, too. But when it comes to 'inside information' from the industry, job advertisements or interesting blog posts, you still need an 'industry' site like this one or Times Higher Education. The discussions on LinkedIn in most groups are not really interesting or useful.
  • Limitations of LinkedIn
  • Posted by Andy Shaindlin at Alumni Futures on December 1, 2010 at 5:15am EST
  • I was just blogging about this today. One limitation of LinkedIn (and there are many, as yet) is the increasing number of false or questionable profiles:

    http://www.alumnifutures.com/2010/11/false-linkedin.html

    As for platform integration, I wouldn't mind being able to access my LinkedIn connections' updates via Flipboard on the iPad.

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